This Lonesome Paradise - Electric Dreams (2021)

Oregon-based band This Lonesome Paradise are described as a Pacific Northwest perdition blues band. They are fronted by Canadian drifter E. Ray Bechard and with a core line-up of Daniel Miller on guitars, Nevada Sowle on keys, drummer Tory Chappell and bassist Max Fields with contributions from Caitlyn Faircloth and Jordin Bordeaux on vocals, Tim Root on harmonica, violinist Nate Crockett and Bart Budwig on horns. Electric Dreams is a dark, brooding gothic Western noir affair, opening with the sparse bass notes and distant sepulchral vocals of the title track summoning arid desert nights.

Occupying similar territory to 3hattrio and drawing on the cinematic intensities of Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, it continues with the lazing dreamy narcotic sway Until You’re Gone, while elsewhere, they slow the pace on the bluesier moods of Night Stalker, Wild Ones and the lengthy Mourning. Still, while that haunted desert ambience is again evoked for the harmonica wailing Needles & Pines, they have an almost playful retro jazz and 50s pop lightness to the bubbly Hello Darkness. In contrast, the bass-anchored Creatures Of The Night imagines some lounge singer crooning away in a nightclub for those who live in the shadows.

Another retro resonance can be found on the slow swaying 60s pop balladry In My Head with its doo-wop backing vocals, circling keyboard melody and noodling guitar notes before it heads to a close, starting with the surf guitar twang reverb and brass of Goodbye Death Valley, leading appropriately to the organ backed, clattering drums Hell Is Real with its lyrics borrowing from Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’ before ending with the jauntier, jazzed keys, spooked Blindness. An album that serves a delicious cherry atop a peyote sundae.